Comment 111543

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted May 11, 2015 at 17:14:55 in reply to Comment 111540

That's one reason to reduce the speed limit: the higher speed limit increases pollution outside rush hour and it doesn't make any difference during rush hour. The périph (built on the land formerly occupied by a military defence ring) definitely harms the urban design of the edge of Paris and cuts it off from the inner suburbs. There have even been calls to remove or cover it!

Greater Paris (Ile de France) is an extremely dense metropolitan area with a population of about 12 million. It is far denser than London and has a much better integrated public transit system. You have to remember that the périph is only 5km from the centre of Paris, roughly equivalent to the inner London ring road (which is the boundary of London's congestion charge zone). If you just want to drive around Paris you wouldn't drive all the way to the périph!

There is no way the road system could ever be built to accommodate the majority of people driving in Paris or the near suburbs: that's why Paris switched to prioritize public transit in the late 1970s (after building expressways along the Seine under Pompidou) and is continuing to expand and densify the public transit system all the time (most notably with there recent Grand Paris project http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris...

The goal is a good transportation network for the whole region ... which is simply not possible to achieve by prioritizing driving. London has managed to improve traffic flow in the downtown core with the congestion charge and by improving conditions for pedestrians. But its public transit system is far worse than Paris's ... in fact they eventually outsourced their buses to Transdev/RATP to try to improve efficiency! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Unit...

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2015-05-11 17:25:14

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